Enjoy Rugby, Enjoy Being a Kid

That is the simple message that Shirley Fife brings to her role as Mini Section co-ordinator for Boroughmuir. She describes herself as “A mum that stood on the touchline once too often” and admits that she was not overjoyed when her son took to rugby in P4. Douglas now plays for the Boroughmuir S1 team at stand-off but his mum admitted “I never stopped him, but I wouldn’t let him play in the scrum”.

Shirley has always had a passing interest in rugby “I watched the internationals on the television” but it wasn’t until Douglas followed a friend to Boroughmuir that she really got involved. At first, she admitted, “I was horrified. I just didn’t want him anywhere near a rugby ground” but despite her reservations she was regularly to be found cheering on the team from the sidelines.

Gradually Shirley got involved with helping out with the after match catering and then when the coach had to retire due to injury at the start of her son’s P7 season she was asked to take on responsibility for phoning round the P7 players to organise games and training. It wasn’t long before the willing helper was offered a broader role within the club “I was told ‘Oh well we need a new co-ordinator for the mini section’” says Shirley “and it wouldn’t have got where it has if there hadn’t been a crowd of coaches that actually wanted to take it forward”.

Shirley sees her role as helping the coaches to move the mini section forward and she takes every opportunity to stress the support she gets from the coaching team “They really want to move the mini section forward so I see my role really as helping them” she says.

Shirley finds time to fit the rugby in with her career because “I need some space” as she says. Her day job is as MacMillan Cancer Palliative Care Coordinator for Community Nursing which is about “the strategic development of cancer services in primary care, predominantly for nursing”. The job covers many areas and as Shirley says, “not many nurses ever get that opportunity to develop a job, but I got the post and was given leave to develop it”.

It was training as a nurse that brought Shirley to Edinburgh from her Dunfermline birthplace and she has stayed here ever since.

In her own youth Shirley was a competitive swimmer so she understands the drive to play sport that her son and others feel although she says of Douglas “He’s caught between rugby and football” as is the case with many youngsters.

Development of closer ties with the senior squad is definitely helping the youngsters to find their heroes on the rugby pitch. The mini section now sponsor three of the Senior squad, Alasdair Strokosch, Stuart Reid and Richard Sneddon and the team have worked hard to encourage the senior players to lend a hand with training.

“A couple of the first team had no idea that there were so many kids playing rugby” Shirley mentioned, but whenever they come along on a Sunday “the kids love it”.

The kids obviously relate to the players but they don’t have a particular favourite “It’s lots of different ones” says Shirley, “I suppose it depends on the position they play themselves and you find that the ones that have been at training become favourites, because they’ve seen them at the training and then they can go and watch them”.  

Shirley had expected to hand over the mini section reigns to someone else this year as her son had moved up to S1. “I resigned but my resignation wasn’t accepted.” She told me, “And that’s something that has to be seriously tackled. We have to have some sort of succession”.

Shirley would like to see closer ties between the mini section and the rest of the club “There just doesn’t seem to be a cohesiveness” she said. For a few years “there’s been a vacuum” she continued and “there needs to be some sort of special planning, because we’re not doing anything that anybody else hasn’t done”. Closer integration would be Shirley’s greatest wish for the mini section and she also believes the split between mini and midi section would be better between S2 and Under 15 rather than the current P7/S1 split.

Shirley was concerned to get the point across that it’s all about the whole team. Working together with the coaches and other helpers to bring enthusiasm to the role. “Enthusiasm for the game. The coaches, are working really hard trying to promote the club, so that the kids are part of Boroughmuir rugby club. When they do go to away games they’ve talked to them a lot about their behaviour so that they are proud to be part of Boroughmuir”.

Shirley wanted to say a big “Thanks” to all the coaches and to remind the kids to “Enjoy rugby, enjoy being a kid”. And one final message for the coaches “I’m not running round Meggetland again. I ran it round twice recently and I ain’t running round it again”.

Mark Furnivall